According to the old priest-written Hebrew Scriptures any villany or atrocity could be indulged in and excused as long as you believed that a judgmental, prejudiced, reclusive god offered you his protection (at a price of obedience to some self-appointed mouthpieces). The personality of the aloof creator-god was openly stated in some versions of the second Commandment, “…for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.” And in Exodus 34:14 seekers were further reminded, “For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god.” That godly characteristic of jealousy allowed, in turn, the associated holy flaws such as belligerence, intolerance, vindictiveness, violence, pugnacity, warmongering, and a raft of similar niceties. In truth those imagined godly characteristics were unconsciously crafted upon the priest-author’s own ambitions for material control, and their own personal flaws of character were subconsciously tacked onto that imagined being. The faith system that was thus crafted in holy book form pointedly revolved around a never seen deity who can be characterized only as their faith system’s indestructible defender. This holy avenger angle was a lucrative promotional tactic which would also be utilized in the founding and crafting of a couple of other by-the-book faith systems which now dominate western cultures.

However, nowhere in those many volumes of holy writ is it ever explained why an omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnipresent (present everywhere) Creator should be racked with such a pathetic human frailty as jealousy. There have, however, been many attempts to get around this apparent weakness–primarily by trying to reinterpret the Hebrew word ganna, which is traditionally translated as “jealous.” Considering that an ultimate power created everything, what could there possibly exist that would cause “him” to suffer the pangs of jealousy? Jealousy is a form of covetousness. Such an idea of godly psychosis only serves to weaken a seeker’s trust. Jealousy is intolerant of rivalry, an emotional weakness that flounders in insecurity, a fear of being supplanted, a distress of possessiveness, an apprehension of ownership–in short, a neurosis.

Nonetheless, Exodus 20:5 portrays the Lord God confessing, “…for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them…” Let’s face it, that is excessively neurotic. Then in Deuteronomy 4:24 we are told, “For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.” And this gets reinforced in Deuteronomy 5:9 where it again relates, “…for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the…” etc. As noted, this supposedly jealous disposition of the Creator Lord conveniently flings the doors wide open for mankind (especially the faith system believers) to practice all the other flaws which habitually accompany jealousy. This is even admitted in Proverbs 6:34, which reminds us, “For rage of a man is jealousy; therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.” This is further typified in-depth in the later book of the visionary Ezekiel 5+, the whole chapter of which pretty much extends holy justification for murderous indulgences by the faithful who, in their egoism, believe they are the “chosen” favorites of the jealous Creator.

Through millennia there have been countless apologists who have attempted to counter the negativity held in the emotion of jealousy which is attributed to God in holy writ. And the fancy sidestepping they have indulged in has been something like watching hip-hop dancers who can seem somewhat gracefully disjointed but awesome in their own right. God’s jealousy has been often likened by apologists to the Lord being zealous (which sounds a lot like jealous), or that god waxes enthusiastic or ardent or fervent in “his” commitment for intelligent life. (Perhaps concern for the intelligent part should be stressed more to the unquestioning believers.) In this way the apologists may then split hairs and say, as did the Reverend C. H. Spurgeon in 1863, that, “…there is such a thing as virtuous jealousy.” He also asserted in a sermons that “…jealousy, like anger, is not evil in itself, or it could never be ascribed to God; his jealousy is ever pure and holy.” If that sounds somewhat incongruous it is the stuff that blind faith thrives on. On the other hand, who among us is familiar with the subtleties that are waterlogged within the fountainhead of Creation? Still and all, it is unlikely in that distant timeframe that the priest-authors of the Old Testament would have couched their implications with such iffy phraseology. Those devious priest-authors aggressively sought to exercise authority and control, so it is not exactly in error that the Hebrew word ganna wound up being translated as Jealous, or that this emotional instability can be identified through human indulgence which typically leans toward intolerance and fearfulness of being supplanted.

The aforementioned Reverend Spurgeon may be forgiven his pulpit jockeying over the Lord’s jealousy back in the 1860s for the word does happen to be derived from the medieval Latin word zelosus (no, that is not misspelled, it is Latin). The Latin zelosus, from the Greek zelus, does mean zeal, and a zealous Lord sounds so much more respectful than a jealous one. Or does it? Zeal is an ardent self-commitment to something–a cause, ideal, goal–an enthusiasm and/or devotion in the pursuit of some emotional reassurance. Zeal and fanaticism happen to be unquestionably interchangeable, as history repeatedly demonstrates. Back in the Roman Empire timeframe the members of the Jewish sect which resisted Roman rule in Palestine were referred to a zealots. They feared being supplanted. Thus to this day, inspired by priest-written scriptural lore, the incongruity over God’s alleged jealousy remains. And we are left to ponder why should the all-powerful Creator-Lord of everything be either jealous or zealous about anything he/she/it created?

The three major faith systems of western cultures were all structured by male authors upon a not-too-subtle animosity toward the active bearing principle (regarded as passive/feminine) which functions within Creation. This juvenile attitude is inexcusable since that energy-production principle is critically essential for any life multiplication. It is also rather cowardly rhetoric for male “shepherds of the faith” to apply the “put the blame on woman” argument in an attempt to absolve themselves from all the error and sin in the world. Such rationale and finger- pointing fails to camouflage the fact that it is the man-is-supreme propaganda of man-written sacred texts which has accounted for the bulk of mankind’s wars and atrocities. Certainly feminine curiosity or womanly wiles or motherly patience have not inflicted such continuing despair and grief upon the world scene as has the male-is-supreme depiction of holiness.

The “holy books” of the three major western faith systems–Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament, and Quran–inelegantly place the alleged curse of “man’s fall” and “original sin” upon the slender shoulders of the feminine sex with the astonishing alibi of a talking serpent! Well, imbibing too much holy wine can certainly inspire guys to invent excuses. At any rate, the bearing principle within Creative Energy, characteristically defined as negative, has been made to carry the emotional baggage of man’s loose-cannon theories of man’s positive spirituality while that inferred “negative” bearing principle still manages to somehow keep life’s foundation functioning with some semblance of stability.

The western culture’s three major faith systems, all of which are rigorously “run by-the-book,” grudgingly allow women only partial redemption for their alleged lesser position: women are intended, so say the man-written “revealed” holy words, only to marry and bear their boastful “providers” with offspring (preferably male). It is as though these three interrelated man-superior faith systems of western cultures reduce the responsibilities and chores of domestic life and child rearing to almost compensate for the feminine gender’s responsibility for man’s “fall from grace.”

In the priest composed Hebrew Scriptures account of Creation, the imagined second attempt by the Creator (as in Genesis 2:21-22) at initiating human production it was implied to have involved the surgical removal of some part of Adam’s anatomy. Apparently by that phase of the Creator’s craftsmanship the Creator had run out of creative “let there be” words to recite. What this questionable version of human life production reveals, unintentionally so, is that it is polar (positive/negative energy) exchange which accounts for the manifestation of any and all matter-life and inanimate matter. The generative systems that the Creator is portrayed as having set in place for the continuance (propagation) of any life species was a built-in feature which specifies only that every manifested material thing automatically carries those generating polar opposites within themselves. There is no exception to this “go forth and multiply” law of Creation.

That the male authors of holy texts were obsessed with their own genitals is clearly evident with the character of Aaron (whose name happens to mean “to conceive“) in the book of Exodus (chapter 28). The fascination with their physical generative equipment, ranked by them as prime paraphernalia, is spelled out in that particular chapter of Exodus with the instructions for the curious “sacred garments” which are to be worn for generating their faith system. To assess the true meaning of all the peculiarities in holy tales remember that euphuisms are employed repeatedly throughout all scriptural texts. In Exodus, for example, the “holy” garments that are to be worn by the high priest included such paraphernalia as the ephod, two onyx stones, pouches of gold, and a breastplate. We should consider here that the word “sacred” is itself derived from the Hebrew word sacre, which means “phallus.” In the “garment” metaphor used in Exodus as to what God’s representatives are to wear, the feminine aspect is something which is entered into or put on, like “golden rings.” We will leave to your analysis any metaphoric explanation as to what “holy oil” alludes to in this “holy” account.

What the formulated sacred language style reveals to us is that the sacred texts of the western cultures do not actually concern genetic purity (reproduction after its own kind), but prefer instead to indulge in sexual role-playing. If life was originally a circumstance of hermaphrodism–i.e. two polar aspects in one energy form as the opening of scriptures asserts–then each division of that singular form had to keep some characteristics from each energy pole (positive/negative) within both separated parts if creative purpose was to be actively maintained within those parts. This means, as a consequence, that no man is ever one hundred percent male, and no woman is ever one hundred percent female. For example, men still retain nipples, and women possess a clitoris which is erectile tissue. That’s just the outer odds and ends of physical personification; there are even more energy-exchange features within every physical form.

Because sacred texts do not deal honestly with sexual polarity the practice became established for fussing over all kinds of sexual misunderstandings, and these are grossly and needlessly exhibited in social problems to this day. The genderless Life Principle (personified as a male God), as shown by Nature itself, cares nothing about sexual chastity; its only concern is genetic purity, meaning that the only limitation that the Life Principle (God) placed upon sexual relationships was only in regard to species constancy, which is to say that each species must create only after its own kind. Sacred texts refuse to honestly admit that there are allowable variations of sexual polarity, preferring instead to labor over the reproduction aspects of sexual activity. It is simply coincidence that reproduction of followers is the meal ticket for the faith’s representatives. Willfully ignored and adamantly denied are the equally inherent and important revitalizing (recreational) characteristics of sexual expression. This pretty much assures that the genuine redeeming principle of attraction known as love will be kept at a minimum.

The Life Principle (personified as a male God) takes pleasure in producing many diverse and varied forms of life expression, and in the priest-composed scriptural tales this variety and diversity of Creation activity is personified as the numerous Levites, the successors of Aaron. It is, therefore, ironic and hypocritical to make use of such scriptural characters and the alleged situations in which they are presented as a means of launching condemnation of any non-productive sexual activity when such characters as Aaron and the Levites are sacred language metaphors for generative (sexual) energy. If doubtful, just remember the exotic details of the “garments” that the high priest (Aaron) was instructed to wear when ministering in the “holy place.” (Exodus 28:6 and 39:ff) The ephod, onyx stones, pouches of gold, breastplate, golden rings, and holy oil all refer to the physical means of life creation and recreation. Some apologists have suggested that the word “ephod” was derived from the Akkadian word epattu (plural epadatu), which referred to some type of expensive garment. In the third century BCE modification of holy word, the Septuagint, the attempt was made to whitewash the original sexual inference by altering ephod to suggest a shoulder strap of a tunic, and in this way the ephod could then be linked with the breastplate of judgment (which just happen to contain the mysterious Urim and Thummim–Exodus 28:30). Thus has holy word evolved through a series of disguises. Beneath the whitewash of sacred language, however, the titillating flavor remains. So, the next time you see some pompous Bishop strutting around in his elaborate vestments and balancing that phallic-image miter upon his head, try not to snicker.